Show Notes
This week, Ellen and Mark read between the lines, and find out what can get lost in translation. Mark speaks to the film critic, Manuela Lazic, who discusses the impossibility of translation, and her experiences of watching films and television across languages. Next, the translator and film critic, Irina Margareta Nistor details her role in overdubbing bootlegged VHS tapes during the Ceaușescu dictatorship in Romania. During the 1980s, her work allowed local audiences an escape from the regime through the medium of foreign cinema. Meanwhile, Ellen discusses the poetry of translation with Darcy Paquet. The translator has produced subtitles with collaborators including the South Korean film director, Bong Joon Ho, on the Oscar award winning film, Parasite. Darcy shares the challenges found in a set character count, and some of the cultural specificities he's noted along the way. Producer: Mae-Li Evans A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
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Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode delve into the ubiquity of the care-experienced person (someone fostered, adopted, or in a children's home) on screen, from Superman to Annie. What can we learn from film and TV about the experience of care and the care system for young people? Ellen speaks to poet, broadcaster and lifelong film fan Lemn Sissay, who grew up in the care system, about some of his favourite care-experienced characters, from Buddy the Elf to The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. And Mark talks to actor and returning Screenshot guest Samantha Morton, who drew on her own childhood for her 2009 directorial feature debut The Unloved, about an 11-year-old girl moving through the care system. Producer: Jane Long A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
Ellen and Mark investigate the relationship between graphic novels and film, asking if the graphic novel is an inherently cinematic artform. Mark talks to critic and lifelong comics fan, Kambole Campbell about the history of comics and graphic novels on the silver screen. Mark then speaks to graphic novelist, Joff Winterhart, about his 2012 graphic novel Days of The Bagnold Summer, and its 2019 film adaptation directed by Simon Bird. The film stars Monica Dolan and Earl Cave as mother and son spending a bittersweet summer together. Mark talks to Joff about what it was like seeing his graphic novel on the big screen. Ellen talks to multimedia artist Sook-Yin Lee, about her film adaptation of the graphic novel Paying For It. A comic that examines the breakdown of her relationship and written by no other then her ex partner, cartoonist Chester Brown. Producer: Queenie Qureshi-Wales A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
As movie megastar Tom Cruise returns to our screens, and the world awaits the revelation of the next James Bond, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode examine the evolution of the leading man. Critic and broadcaster Christina Newland talks to Mark about the changing face of the Hollywood heartthrob, from the silent era's 'Latin lover’, Rudolph Valentino, to contemporary stars Timothée Chalamet, Michael B. Jordan and Glen Powell. Ellen speaks to acclaimed casting director Susan Shopmaker, whose eye for talent has helped shape the careers of some of the hottest actors working today, including Jeremy Allen White, Riz Ahmed and Callum Turner. And Ellen also talks to a real-life leading man - actor Jason Isaacs. Jason’s many celebrated roles have included Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, an Emmy-nominated turn in The White Lotus, and playing the archetypal leading man Cary Grant in the biographical ITVX series Archie. Producer: Jane Long A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode consider the role of natural history film and TV today. Ellen speaks to the wildlife cinematographer, Sophie Darlington ASC who has spent decades recording wildlife for primetime documentaries for the BBC, National Geographic, Netflix and beyond. Meanwhile, Mark talks to Ed Sayers, director of recent feature film Super Nature, a global love letter to the natural world, filmed on Super 8. Mark also speaks to the Oscar-winning director of My Octopus Teacher, James Reed. Producer: Mae-Li Evans A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
From Butch and Sundance to Maverick and Goose, Woody and Buzz to Frodo and Sam, male friendships have long been at the heart of many of our favourite screen stories. But in recent years, stories about male friendship seem to have taken on new significance. They’ve become a way of exploring emotional vulnerability and what it means to be a man in an era shaped by debates around the manosphere, toxic masculinity and the male loneliness epidemic. Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode revisit some of film and TV’s most memorable male pairings, and ask how today’s filmmakers are responding to what many describe as a crisis of masculinity. Ellen speaks to critic Matt Schimkowitz, staff writer at US website The AV Club, about how male friendships have featured in Hollywood movies, from classic comedy double acts like Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello, to the chaotic camaraderie of the Jackass movies. Mark speaks to writer-director Bruce Robinson, who mined his own very personal experiences of male friendship to create the cult 1987 film Withnail & I, about two out-of-work actors living in Camden Town at the end of the 1960s. And Mark also speaks to Jack Rooke, creator of the Channel 4 comedy-drama Big Boys, which found fresh emotional depth in the familiar male ‘odd-couple’ dynamic. Drawing on Jack’s own time at university in the early 2010s, the series concluded in 2025 with a highly-acclaimed episode sensitively exploring the long shadow cast by suicide. Producer: Jane Long A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4